Master the Apple Pencil - 7 TIPS to improve your Apple Pencil Skills

You want to improve your control over your Apple Pencil? In this video, I will give you 7 tips and exercises to improve your Apple Pencil control skills. In this video, I will be working in the app Procreate. But you can do these exercises in any drawing app on your iPad. First thing I would like to say is relax. The Apple Pencil and the iPad, they work very well together. So you don't need to worry about your hand touching the screen of your iPad. You can just lay it down on your screen and relax while making brush strokes. So you don't need to lift your hand and make awkward movements like this. Just relax your hand on the screen. There are different ways you can hold and move your Apple Pencil. You can make movements from your fingers like this. Just moving your fingers slightly, making these short strokes. Or you can move your wrist like this. This will allow you to make longer, more confident strokes. And the third way you can make strokes is by moving your entire arm. You can move it from your elbow or even from your shoulder. Making big movements like this, allowing you to make long strokes. So there are three ways to make these movements with the Apple Pencil. Small strokes from your fingers. Bigger strokes using your wrist. And these very big strokes using your entire arm. Another thing you can adjust if you hold your pencil is the pencil tilt. Some brushes in Procreate enable you to also use the side of your pencil. Like the 6B pencil for instance. If you hold it upright, your pencil, you will make these very thin strokes. Like using a real, real life pencil. But if you hold your pencil like this and use the side of your pencil, you will get these thicker strokes. It's like using the side of a real life pencil. Now that we have covered ways to hold your pencil, let's do some exercises. Go to calligraphy and select the shale brush. It's a pressure sensitive brush. But since we're doing an exercise, we want to turn off streamline. Streamline is very handy when you want to make smooth lines. But in this case, we want to practice making smooth lines ourselves. First thing we'll do is make vertical lines. And just try to keep the line the same thickness all over. This is an exercise to practice making long confident strokes. And as you can see, I'm using my entire arm to make these long strokes. Working from my elbow. And once you've made vertical lines, you can also practice making horizontal lines, diagonal lines. And if you just do these exercises on a daily basis, even if you just practice for like five or ten minutes, you will see your apple pencil skills improve. Don't just exercise making lines from your elbow or entire arm, but also exercise making these wrist lines. Like I showed in the beginning of the video. Try to keep the distance between the lines equal and make these confident strokes. Just let your hand rest on your screen and turn your wrist like this. Now once you've laid down these lines, you can make it even harder for yourself and make more lines between the lines that you just drew. This is a good exercise for hand-eye coordination. And you can do the same thing with the arm lines. The ones that you made from your elbow. Another good exercise is to not just make long lines, but also make dashed lines. We'll make short lines here, vertical. And try to duplicate these next to them. And try to make them all straight. And as you can see, as we move towards more, well, smaller lines, we will start working from our fingers. So you start off with the movement from your arm, your elbow. Then as you go smaller, you will move from your wrist. And finally, when these lines get very small, you will work from your fingers. Just continue to make these smaller, make these dashed lines. And also, don't just do this vertical, but also try it in a horizontal line or diagonal. Besides practicing drawing long, straight lines, you can also practice getting control of the pressure sensitivity. So with this brush, with the shill brush, it's pressure sensitive. And it will be thicker when you use more pressure. Now, to exercise the practice, try making these lines that start off being very thick, and then go thinner, and try to duplicate it. Also try to make lines that are the same thickness on the entire line. And also make very thin lines. Try to get a feeling for that pressure sensitivity. So some thin lines. And also try to start off very thin and then go thicker. And try to replicate the line that you drew before. Also try making a line that has thick and thin parts. And these may seem like very simple exercises, but if you just spend five minutes doing these, you'll really get more control over your pencil and over your strokes. And again, don't just do these lines in a diagonal fashion, but also horizontal, vertical, to get more control. Again, start thick and thin. Another great way to practice is by using a sheet like this one with calligraphy letters. You can put these letters on a layer and turn down the opacity so it'll be a bit gray. And then make a new layer on top and use the shill brush or another calligraphy brush and try to trace these letters. It's a great exercise to get control over that pressure sensitivity, but also making smooth lines. And remember, we still have streamline turned off for this brush. So we're not getting any help from the app. Just try to make smooth lines yourself. It's a great practice. Finally, another way to practice making straight lines, smooth lines, circles, anything is by tracing a coloring page. I've placed the coloring page in the app in Procreate and I turned down the opacity. Now I've made a new layer on top and I'll just start tracing all the shapes in the coloring page. And you can use any coloring page that you like and just trace all the lines thoughtlessly. Very relaxing and a great practice to make these smooth lines. These were my tips and exercises to get better control over your Apple Pencil. Now, if you incorporate these exercises into your daily drawing routine, and even if you just do these exercises like 5 or 10 minutes, I'm sure that your drawing skills or writing skills with the Apple Pencil will improve. And if you want to get some more exercise inspiration, be sure to check out my other video as well with 12 digital drawing exercises. Have fun practicing, keep drawing and I will see you next time for the next digital art tutorial. Thanks for watching!